Page 35 of Fighting for Her Heart

“Then where are they?” Every muscle in my body is tense.

“Hidden by magic.” She smiles a tad smugly. “Just likewe’rehidden fromthem.”

“What?” I turn back toward the house.

“If I’m going to share secrets of magic with you.” She squeezes my hand. “I can’t have vampires using their powers to eavesdrop.”

Her matter-of-fact explanation annoys me, but does make sense. “They’rereallyokay?” I look back toward the house, still no sign of them.

“Perfectly fine.” She smiles. “Albeit confused as to why they can’t hear us. At this moment, the professor and bad boy are fighting about which one of them lost their focus to hear us first.”

“Ifyoucan see and hear them,” I ask her, “why can’t I?”

“That’s how my magic works.” She shrugs like it’s simple. “I could break the spell for a moment to show you, but I think it would just make matters worse.”

“Why would it make it worse?” I’m finding it harder and harder to trust my own mother.

“Think about it. If you reappeared and then disappeared again…” Sighing, she cups my face. “You know those vampires better than I do, but I suspect that would only vex them further.”

She’s right about that. The tension inside me starts to unfurl, and her hands drop from my face.

“You’resurethey’re okay?” I turn back toward the house one more time.

“One hundred percent.”

I take in a deep breath. “Okay, then show me how to work my magic.”

Chapter Twelve

Ember

I followMom back into the forest, checking over my shoulder every few moments until the house disappears from sight. If I’m going to trust Mom in most things, I need to trust her in this. The men are fine, they’re still here on the farm with me, we’re just hidden from each other for a short time.

We reach the spot where we talked before. The blue light surrounds us, but my bedroom is gone—theillusionof my bedroom, that is. Curiosity and excitement bubble inside me again.

“The first thing you need to understand,” Mom says, lifting her hands toward the treetops in a wide vee, “is that magic is always around you, always and everywhere.”

“It is?” I glance around. “Where? How do I see it? How do I access it?”

Holding her amulet in one hand, she takes mine with the other, and the world around us changes. Before my eyes, night turns to day. Fall turns to summer. Sunlight streams through a green canopy, and it all seems so real, except that the sun doesn’t burn me. Above us, birds chirp, and then a butterfly lands on my outstretched hand, so lifelike I feel the air moving on my fingers as its wings flap.

Amazed, I turn toward Mom but her eyes are closed as she tips her face skyward.

Above us, the leaves change color, autumn arriving in moments as if I’m watching time-lapse photography. But even though it happens quickly, it seems natural. The leaves begin to fall around us, soon covering the forest floor in a tapestry of reds, oranges and yellows that morph into browns as clouds drift across the sky to block out the sun.

Snowflakes fall, their frozen structures melting as they land on my arms and my upturned face, and within seconds snow blankets the ground.

“I don’t even feel cold,” I say in wonder and then suddenly I do, the air stinging my skin and making me tremble. But then almost as soon as the frigid air registers in my body, the sun returns and tiny flowers—snow drops, tiny daffodils, blue bells—burst from the now decayed leaves to redecorate the forest floor as the canopy of leaves above us fills in again.

Mom releases my hand.

We’re back in the late autumn nighttime forest, surrounded by the blue glow.

“How…” I can barely find the air to speak. “How did you do that?”

“It’s difficult to explain.” She smiles softly. “Everything we sense around us is an illusion on some level.”

I shake my head. “What? So you’re saying we’re living in the Matrix or something?”